


from conditional to present

by punkrightnow



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Confessions, Gratuitous F Bombs, Love Letters, M/M, Some Humor, art student!jongin, grammar nerd!kyungsoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28611399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrightnow/pseuds/punkrightnow
Summary: Dear Kyungsoo Do,the letter begins,Hi, sorry if this is kinda weird lol. Im in psychics with you and Im not that good at aproaching people wich is why I decided to say it like this.Kyungsoo’s eye twitches.In which Kyungsoo is a grammar nazi and Jongin likes him anyways.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Kim Jongin | Kai
Comments: 38
Kudos: 129
Collections: The Little Prince Fest_Round Three





	from conditional to present

**Author's Note:**

> written for the little prince fest, prompt #DKS-20-139: Popular guy Kyungsoo doesn't give any of his admirers the time of the day. Until he starts getting badly spelled or bad grammar letters and since he's like a grammar nazi or something, he can't resist responding/reacting.

Kyungsoo doesn’t pay much attention to the letter at first.

“Woah, another one?” Baekhyun asks from beside him, munching loudly on a slice of pizza. They’re sitting together in the canteen, taking a break in between classes and exam prep and university talks. “That makes it, what, the third time this month?”

Today’s letter was slid carefully through the top of Kyungsoo’s locker so that it fluttered out like a flower petal when he went to open it. It is sealed in a pastel yellow envelope with pink hearts decorating the edges. He’d carried it with him from the lockers on instinct, but now that it’s here he doesn’t really know what to do with it.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo says, brow furrowing. _to kyungsoo♡,_ the envelope reads. “There’s been a lot lately.”

Baekhyun shrugs. “It’s probably because we’re graduating soon. Seems like the whole student body was in love with you.” He wrinkles his nose. “Wait, ew, not me though.”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “I know.”

The letters first began two years ago, when a certain Chanyeol Park—no doubt having read too much damn shoujo manga—sent him a love letter, met him by the aesthetic but not-so-private tree behind the school, and was promptly shut down so hard that it became an instant meme. Since then, half as jokes and half as sheepishly-enabled confessions, Kyungsoo has been the recipient of at least one letter a month. His consistently unimpressed reactions have only seemed to make things worse.

“Go on, open it.”

Kyungsoo frowns, putting down the lunch he’d been unpacking. “Now?”

“Why not?”

Kyungsoo looks at him. Baekhyun’s face is the picture of innocence, but out of the corner of his eye Kyungsoo can still see his fingers inching surreptitiously towards the letter. 

“Why are you like this,” Kyungsoo sighs, moving it aside. Baekhyun grins, the nosy little shit. “Fine. I’ll read it.”

The daisy sticker securing the envelope comes off with a quiet _pop._ Kyungsoo reaches in to pull out a sheaf of smooth, thick paper, almost like what he’d expect an artist to use. He raises an eyebrow, reluctantly impressed; it’s the first one he’s received that isn’t just notebook paper.

Then he unfolds it, smooths it out, and starts reading, Baekhyun peering over his shoulder like a bird.

 _Dear Kyungsoo Do,_ the letter begins, _Hi, sorry if this is kinda weird lol. Im in psychics with you and Im not that good at aproaching people wich is why I decided to say it like this._

Kyungsoo’s eye twitches. 

“Psychics,” Baekhyun snorts.

_Also cos I heard that other people write stuff too so I thought it wouldnt be to crazy to do what there doing you know. Basicolly what Im saying is Im not weird just shy. Sorry haha Im rambling_

Baekhyun whistles. “Sounds pretty genuine.”

“Shh.” A dull throb is building up in Kyungsoo’s temples. This letter is not exactly like the others, and it isn’t just the paper.

They keep reading. _Anyways I dont know you that good but I think your super cute and super smart and I like you alot. You helped me a few times when miss kwon was totally after my ass lol & I always thought your really cool after that. Plus your so nice and you let me borow pens all the time. Yeah sorry Im dum hahaha _

He’s beginning to feel dizzy, now. The faint impressions of wavy red and blue underlines swim before his eyes like police emergency lights, blaring sirens and all. _Wrong. Wrong. Wrong._

“You good?” Baekhyun asks, sounding amused. 

_“Shh,”_ Kyungsoo hisses. 

_Anyways you think I can buy you lunch some time or some thing? I know you dont usually acept these letters but I think you and me could maybe go along pretty good. I really hope you would give me a chance :)_

Holy shit. 

Spelling, punctuation, subject pronouns versus object pronouns, adverbs versus adjectives, indicative versus conditional tenses, _handwritten emoticons—_

That’s it. Kyungsoo has had enough. Kyungsoo is done with this. Either this is a talented troll or an unbelievably incompetent child and frankly Kyungsoo does not care to find out which.

“Oh, hey—” 

_“What?”_

“No need to shout,” Baekhyun pouts. “Just, look—they left their name at the bottom.”

Kyungsoo whips his head down, glaring. He isn’t curious so much as vengeful at this point. That’s when he sees it, at the very bottom, penned in dreamy, masterful cursive:

 _From,  
_ _Your Secret Admire, Jongin Kim_

Kyungsoo reads it once. Reads it again. Closes his eyes. Takes a deep, steadying breath.

“…Um, Kyungsoo?” Baekhyun asks. “Why are you clenching your fists so tigh—”

“How, in the _hell,”_ Kyungsoo begins, menacingly quiet. Baekhyun gulps. “Could I. Possess. A fucking. _VERB?!”_

This last word is fucking _yelled,_ the thunderous outburst of all his built-up disbelief. The tables around them go quiet, staring. In the roiling mass of fury that is presently Kyungsoo’s brain, this barely registers.

“And if you’re changing it to a _verb,_ then why the fuck would you still describe it with a fucking _adjective?!_ Hell, why is it even an epithet to begin with!! Did you even _read_ what the fuck you _wrote?_ Do you even _understand_ the _English language??”_ He glances back down at the letter, breathing hard. _Your Secret Admire, Jongin Kim,_ it says, unchanged. He sees red. “And if you’re going to give me your _full fucking name,”_ he seethes, “then where’s. The fucking. _SECRET!!”_

Silence has now fallen in a whole ten metre radius of where they’re sitting (or, in Kyungsoo’s case, standing aggressively over the table in barely conscious anger). Baekhyun’s pizza lies forgotten on its plate, its owner too dazed to finish eating. 

“Baekhyun!” Kyungsoo barks.

Baekhyun jolts to attention. “Y-yes, sir!”

“We are going to find this clown. Now. Understood?” 

“Huh? But—”

 _“Now,”_ Kyungsoo repeats, eyes narrowing. 

Baekhyun gulps. When Kyungsoo gets in moods like this—which, to be fair, is almost never—there is no stopping him. “Okay.”

As luck would have it, Kyungsoo’s ‘Secret Admire’ is not a very difficult clown to find. They have physics next period, and Baekhyun apparently knows him as one of the kids who hangs out in the corridors before class. Personally, Kyungsoo’s never really understood them; he goes to class when it’s time for class, and leaves when it’s time to leave. 

“Wait, dude, Jongin Kim,” Baekhyun pipes up suddenly. They’re walking up the stairs to the science corridor, passing by lockers and posters and loud troupes of middle schoolers. “I just realised—isn’t that like, the super hot guy in my art class? I forgot he was the same one in physics.”

Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. “How am I supposed to know?”

Baekhyun frowns, seeming to consider this. “Hm. Fair. Anyways, I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.” He looks expectantly to Kyungsoo, wiggling his eyebrows, then sighs when all he gets in response is a blank look. “Dude. You deaf or what? I’m telling you, this guy’s _hot.”_

Kyungsoo thinks back through the few memories he can hazily relate to this so-called Jongin Kim. Now that he’s had time to process the contents of the letter beyond its blasphemy, he _does_ kind of remember lending some shy-looking kid a pen a few times, and possibly answering one of Ms. Kwon’s questions in his place. He can’t quite summon up anything beyond that.

“So?” he ends up saying, just to be annoying.

Baekhyun rolls his eyes. _“So,_ maybe don’t instantly reject him this time?”

“What, just for his looks? Sounds pretty shallow if you ask me.”

 _“No,_ oh my god,” Baekhyun groans. “Just, in general, you know? It’s like you reject everyone on principle or something. Live a little, man. Even Chanyeol wasn’t honestly that bad.”

“Oi, don’t go around projecting your sad little crush onto me,” Kyungsoo retorts. If Baekhyun _really_ wants to make him talk about this shit, Kyungsoo’s not going down without a fight. 

Baekhyun goes pink, stopping dead in the middle of the staircase. “Th-that’s—I’m not—Chanyeol is—”

Kyungsoo just smiles, patting his head. “Whatever you say,” he says gently, almost sadistically.

Baekhyun glares at him, but stays silent for the rest of the walk. Small victories, Kyungsoo supposes. 

Of course he doesn’t reject everyone _on principle,_ he thinks irritably. So what if Jongin has objectively well-proportioned features or whatever? The man doesn’t know how to spell _approach_. And Kyungsoo’s love letters are his own business, thanks very much. What he does with them is none of Baekhyun’s concern.

By the time they reach the science corridor, Kyungsoo’s irritation has only slightly subsided. A few metres away, he spots the fluffy back of a head at least ten centimetres taller than his own, bent in conversation with a classmate named—Sehun? Sehyun? Kyungsoo has never really been much for names. Or people.

“That’s him,” Baekhyun whispers, sounding nervous.

It’s all the confirmation Kyungsoo needs. He grips the letter in his pocket, narrows his eyes, and charges forwards with all the single-mindedness of a bull. So _this_ is the eighteen year old man who does not know how to fucking write.

“…so I _think_ he got it, but I’m not su—”

“Jongin Kim,” Kyungsoo interrupts, anger rekindling. He snatches the paper out of his pocket, jabbing it in front of him like a weapon. “Did you send this letter?”

The fluffy-haired man cuts off, turning around. Upon making eye contact, his face shifts from shock to delight to extreme bashfulness, all in the space of about half a second. Yes, his face _is_ familiar, Kyungsoo realises, through the stab of annoyance at having to tilt his head up.

“O-oh, Kyungsoo! Yeah, that was uh, that was me,” Jongin says sheepishly. He fidgets uncertainly with his hands for a moment, before continuing, with a hopeful smile: “So, um…what did you think?” 

The way he smiles is as if his whole head is some kind of machine, Kyungsoo notices, with levers hoisting up his lips and circuits powering the light bulbs behind his eyes. He has nice eyes, too, all bright and almond-y. And a sharp jawline, and, one might say, a fairly pretty mouth—

“What did I think?” Kyungsoo echoes, hurling that train of thought violently off of its tracks. He pauses for a moment, disoriented, until the sensation of smooth paper in his hand reminds him why he’s here. He darkens. “What I _think,_ Jongin Kim,” he growls, “is that you need to learn how the fuck to use the English language.”

There is a pin-drop silence. Jongin blinks, Kyungsoo glares, Baekhyun winces—until, at last, Seh(y?)un lets out a bright guffaw.

Instantly Kyungsoo’s glare zeroes in on him. “Holy shit,” Seh(y)un is laughing, “you really are a fucking legend.”

Jongin looks shy. “Sorry, um, you were saying…what was it? The…English language?”

“Yes,” Kyungsoo snaps, “and the fact that you are fucking illiterate. _How_ have you gotten this far in life without the ability to spell basic words, put full stops at the ends of your sentences, use _any_ commas whatsoever, or have a basic fucking grasp on tenses?” A thought hits him and he falters, eyes going round and apologetic. “Wait, crap—sorry, are you…”

“He’s not dyslexic or anything,” Seh(y)un fills in for him, looking delighted. “He’s just a dumbass.”

 _“Hey!”_ Jongin hisses, hitting his shoulder. The tips of his ears are bright red. “Not cool!”

“Nor wrong, from what I can tell,” Kyungsoo says sharply, narrowing his eyes. Any hesitance he might have briefly felt has since vanished. “Seriously, you need _lessons._ You need to go to fucking school and listen to your fucking teachers. How the hell are you going to get a job? How the hell are you going to pass _any_ of your exams? Get ahold of yourself. This is _basic.”_

Frustratingly, Jongin doesn’t react to this with anything besides polite nods and embarrassed smiles. Kyungsoo’s eye twitches. Is this guy even listening to him? (On the other hand, Seh(y)un is cackling like a maniac in the background—who _is_ this kid?—and Baekhyun has been trying to covertly side-step away, not that Kyungsoo’s paying him much attention.)

“Well, anything to say for yourself?” Kyungsoo asks, exasperated. 

Jongin furrows his brow. “Uh, so basically, what you’re saying is…” He trails off, lips pursed in thought, then brightens. “You want to teach me?”

There is another pin-drop silence.

Kyungsoo stares at him. “What.”

“‘Cause you’re saying you want me to improve, right?”

“Um. Yes? But—”

Jongin beams, another one of those blinding machine-like smiles that Kyungsoo can’t help but be disarmed by. “Great!” he chirps. “I usually work for a bit in the art room after school, there’s tables and chairs and stuff. You free today?”

“I-I guess, but—”

“Then it’s a date,” Jongin grins, apparently oblivious to the incredulous gaping of all three people in his vicinity. Kyungsoo has never been so bewildered in his life. 

The door opens. Kyungsoo jerks his head, staring, helpless against an encroaching feeling of doom.

“Hello, hello!” Ms. Kwon says, ushering them in before he can find the words to fight it. He stares disbelievingly at Jongin as they walk in, even more bewildered to feel a slight warmth in his face when Jongin smiles back.

“What just happened,” Baekhyun whispers, shaken, once they’re seated. “Wait, oh my god, are you _blushi—”_

“No,” Kyungsoo snaps, though he’s wondering the exact same things. Fuck.

Kyungsoo hasn’t been inside the art room for years. It smells of rich, cloying substances he’s not familiar with, and something chalky that reminds him of pencil lead. Sunlight streams into the room from massive windows on one wall, illuminating the dusty surfaces of wooden tables and chairs. On the other walls are paintings of myriad shapes, sizes, and skill levels, from the middle schoolers’ self-portraits and styrofoam prints to the high schoolers’ bold charcoal pieces and abstract acrylics. It intimidates Kyungsoo, a little bit. A whole world, that he knows nothing about.

Of course he came. There was no other choice. He’s an asshole sometimes, but never _that_ kind of asshole, so he couldn’t just leave Jongin hanging. And he had to clear up the misunderstanding somehow.

(“You sure you’re not just, you know, finally interested in somebody?” Baekhyun had teased him by the gate earlier, before heading home and leaving Kyungsoo alone with his dilemma. 

Kyungsoo had been dreading this question. “…Absolutely not.”

Baekhyun grinned. “You paused.”

“Shut up,” Kyungsoo said gruffly, and the sound of Baekhyun’s parting laughter had followed him to the lockers, the toilets, and then finally the art corridor.)

Jongin is standing in front of a table on the far left, bent over an A3 sheet of thick, smooth paper. Probably the same material as his letter, Kyungsoo realises. He has a paintbrush in his right hand that he’s using to wash the whole thing a frosty cyan, sweeping it up and down in big, masterful strokes. 

For a second Kyungsoo just watches, impressed despite himself. He hadn’t fully absorbed the fact that Jongin was an art student, before.

“Hey,” he calls into the silence. Suddenly he feels awkward, without any righteous grammatical fury to give himself context.

Jongin looks up, breaking out into a smile. He puts his brush down and pats the seat beside him. “Hey, nice to see you! Sit down, sit down.”

“Okay,” Kyungsoo responds blandly, and does.

It’s a little uncomfortable, sitting this close. Kyungsoo can see the shifting of Jongin’s biceps as he works, and the sharp, focused glint of his eyes. He swallows. So this is the boy that, ah… _likes_ him. 

Kyungsoo fights the urge to slam his head into a table. Fuck these thoughts. Fuck this whole situation.

“I, um,” he begins, deciding to get things over with, “was not actually suggesting to teach you, earlier. I was just, uh, venting. Because that letter you wrote was…” Some of his anger from before flares back up, and suddenly he forgets his reservations. “…the _worst_ fucking letter I have ever received in my life, how the fuck have you lived until now, holy shit, it makes me so _angry_ —”

Jongin cuts him off with a hearty, almost fond laugh, that makes his lips curve even higher and his eyes light up even brighter. “I got that,” he says, smiling. Then it wavers, and all of a sudden he looks guilty. “I, actually, um…kind of got the other thing, too. Before you told me.”

Kyungsoo blinks. “What?”

Jongin chews his lip. “I, well, um…I know you don’t usually take this stuff that seriously, so I kind of just…saw a chance and jumped on it, and got lucky when class started?” He cringes. “Um. Yeah. Sorry.”

Kyungsoo blinks again, absorbing this. The hell? “If you had the guts to do that, then why the hell didn’t you just ask me out the _normal_ way?”

 _“No,_ nonono, no way, I could never,” Jongin stammers, shaking his head so rapidly it looks like it’s vibrating. “That’s—that’s beyond me. You’re too, like…” He meets Kyungsoo’s eyes and trails off, then ducks his head, reddening. “Really. I couldn’t.”

Holy shit. What the fuck is this. Kyungsoo feels inexplicably flustered, like he’s on the verge of blushing too. And then he realises something, and cool, sweet relief courses through him like a river. 

“Oh,” he laughs, “then that letter was a ruse, too, right? I knew it. There’s no way anybody’s English could be _that_ awful.”

Jongin looks pained. The river runs abruptly dry. “Uh. No. That. That was real.”

“Ah.”

Silence settles around them like dust. Jongin goes back to his work, brushstrokes spreading slowly left. But his movements are a little stiffer than before, and he keeps darting glances Kyungsoo’s way and somehow getting surprised when Kyungsoo notices.

This is fucking ridiculous, Kyungsoo thinks to himself. So this kid—who’s too shy to answer Ms. Kwon’s questions or ask Kyungsoo out in any form that isn’t a damn letter—has somehow managed to pull a fast one on _Kyungsoo Do_ of all people, finagle himself some kind of date, and is now too shy to actually do anything else? What kind of messed up duality is this? Most likely he just didn’t think it through, Kyungsoo concludes with a sigh. Typical high school kid.

The rational—and easy—course of action at this point would be to stand up, make his excuses, and leave. 

Instead: “What are you painting?” he asks.

Jongin startles, brush slipping a bit. One misshapen splash of blue.

Kyungsoo winces. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Jongin says quickly. “It’s just the underpainting. As for what it’s going to be, um…” His brush stills, and he looks up, eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Maybe I could just show you?”

Kyungsoo scoots back as Jongin reaches for something beneath the table, which turns out to be a big sketchbook with tattered black covers and a mess of loose papers sticking out from the sides. He opens it, leafing through the chaos with practiced efficiency, until he seems to find what he’s looking for and puts the book down.

“There,” he says.

The two-page spread on the table before them is chock full of ink, paint, and pencil marks, with sketches and notes and colour swatches scattered all over in the kind of order you’d suspect only the creator would understand. _distopia?_ says one note. _big eye = feeling of being wached. cloud mix w outline = in nature. Not manmade. bluring line b/w man & natural. _Alongside this are a dozen seemingly random blobs of paint, mostly icy shades of blue, but also vivid yellows and reds. A progression of steadily more detailed sketches snakes its way across the pages in between, taking up the vast majority of the space. Jongin is tapping a pencil against one on the far right, where a frighteningly elaborate circle of skyscrapers reaches up towards a massive, eye-like cloud structure in the atmosphere.

For a moment Kyungsoo isn’t sure how to respond. It’s just…damn. It feels mean to say unexpected, but it kind of is.

“Jesus. You’re good,” he ends up saying, and meaning. 

Jongin looks down again, bashful. “I’m okay,” he says awkwardly. “Good enough for art school at least, I hope.”

“You’re applying to art school? What’s that like?”

Jongin shrugs. “It’s just portfolios mostly. And the same personal statements as everyone else, of course.” He pauses, looking sheepish. “I uh, I use Grammarly for those ones.”

“Huh. Cool,” Kyungsoo says, again with that slight sense of intimidation. A whole other world.

“That’s why, um,” Jongin continues, “I’m not that worried about my writing or whatever. It’s like, you know—I don’t need language to see, or to draw. People started drawing before they started writing, I bet. It’s like…an older kind of language.”

There’s a beat of silence. Jongin looks down again, scratching his cheek.

“You’re really passionate about this,” Kyungsoo observes.

Jongin smiles at the floor. “Yeah.”

It’s not like Kyungsoo thought Jongin was a total dumbass, exactly. But these kinds of thoughts, this kind of sensitivity…he’s reminded distinctly of his primary school teacher squatting down and telling the class to repeat after her, _never judge a book by its cover._ Sometimes Kyungsoo wonders if he’s a little too stiff, a little too harsh, a little too naïve.

“Sorry,” he says suddenly, breaking the quiet. “You’re right. About the writing stuff. I’m just—like that, sometimes.”

Jongin looks up, smile turning into something softer, bordering on affectionate. “I know,” he says. “That’s part of why I like you. You’re so, like…hardcore. And sincere. And you don’t care what people think. But you’re also so _nice,_ man. I mean it.”

That goddamn fucking good-for-nothing heat is coming back into Kyungsoo’s cheeks, he notices irritably. But, well, credit where credit’s due.

“Thanks,” he grunts, making Jongin laugh.

The silence that settles in this time is decidedly more comfortable.

“So what’s your deal?” Jongin asks conversationally, dipping his brush in a slightly darker shade of blue.

Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“You know,” Jongin says. “Why you don’t like the letters and stuff. I’ve been talking kind of a lot, so maybe you wanted to say something instead?”

Kyungsoo makes a face. “No thank you.”

Jongin looks up at him mid-stroke, head tilted. “Really?”

Kyungsoo heaves a sigh. He _hates_ talking about this shit. I _hate_ talking about this shit, he almost says, and then for some reason doesn’t. There must be something weird in the art room air.

“It’s nothing big,” he ends up starting wearily. “It’s just uncomfortable, is all. Because I don’t know what to do with them, and they’re mostly jokes anyways, and when they’re not I’m just…not interested.” He lets his eyes grow more serious. “And I never do things when my heart isn’t in it. I hate that. Being that kind of person.”

It isn’t actually that awful to talk about, now that he’s doing it. It’s just uncomfortable as hell. Kyungsoo doesn’t like operating in the realm of ‘romance’, or whatever. It’s a whole concept that he’s never fully grasped, and worst of all that he fundamentally can’t control, even if he did. Kyungsoo likes grammar and science and maths because they are governed by rules, and because once you know the rules you’re in the clear. ‘Romance’ (or whatever) is not like that. Plus, it just feels like something that should be beneath him. Even if that’s obviously stupid.

“Fair,” Jongin says. Then he smiles, seemingly more to himself. “And so damn _cool,_ too. Seriously, Kyungsoo. You’re so cool.”

Kyungsoo averts his eyes, hoping to hell that that godawful heat doesn’t resurface. “Thanks. I guess.”

The elephant in the room—that despite all of this, Kyungsoo’s still here with Jongin, making conversation—grows heavier, all of a sudden. The silence stretches taut.

“Would you, um—” 

“Do you maybe—” 

They cut off at the same time, staring awkwardly. 

“You first,” Kyungsoo says, seizing the opportunity, because no way is _he_ going to be the one to bring up this shit.

“Oh,” Jongin says, looking shy again. “Well. I was just gonna say. You’re still, um, here? So…maybe, um. How would you, um…” He trails off, rubbing his neck. It takes him a few seconds, but eventually he seems to settle on something. “What _did_ you think of my letter? Like, the suggestion at the end. You know.”

Kyungsoo shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath. Perhaps he could—should—live a little, indeed.

“I think,” he says slowly, “that. Maybe. It would not be so bad. To, ah. Let you buy me lunch sometime.”

The grin that spreads across Jongin’s face at this point is the machine operating at full force, eyes lighting up as bright as Ms. Kwon’s ray boxes, unobstructed. Something about it makes Kyungsoo’s chest seize up, not unpleasantly.

“I knew you and me would get along pretty good,” Jongin says, practically glowing.

Kyungsoo groans. “No, what the hell?” 

Jongin looks taken aback. “No?”

“It’s fucking _well._ We would get along _well,”_ Kyungsoo says emphatically, and allows himself to crack a smile when Jongin laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> the description of that painting thing is a reference to 2:40 of the [mmmh mv](https://youtu.be/Fc-fa6cAe2c), if anyone's interested^^
> 
> i was originally just going to write something short and stupid, but somehow despite remaining short the vibe ended up changing quite a bit :(( i do wish i could've made it longer but ah well. perhaps one day i'll add more!
> 
> thank you to the mods for their patience (sorry for missing my extension 🥺), my prompter for the supremely fun prompt, everybody reading for reading, and of course kyungsoo for existing. wish i could have done him more justice but still, happy birthday to bestest boy!!!


End file.
